


Imperfect Diamond

by remembertowrite



Series: Tumblr Prompts [4]
Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Flash Fic, Fluff, I can't believe I wrote something happy, Tumblr Prompt, for the_wonderful_jinx but AO3 is weird and says she doesn't exst, so I can't gift it officially
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 05:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6226663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remembertowrite/pseuds/remembertowrite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex picks up Strand from the airport. Based on a "first kiss" Tumblr prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imperfect Diamond

**Author's Note:**

> Original posted on [Tumblr](http://surely-you-jess.tumblr.com/post/140897790858/prompt-response) as a prompt response to [The_Wonderful_Jinx](http://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wonderful_Jinx/pseuds/The_Wonderful_Jinx).

He’s here, he’s finally here, and she has missed him entirely too much for a journalist who prides herself on the fairness of her reporting. The further he pulls back from her, the more he flees from Seattle in pursuit of clues that lead him down dead ends not unlike the unsettling quietude of the small town cul-de-sacs she grew up with, the greater her drive to look after his well-being. (She’s becoming her mother: irritatingly meddlesome with the best of intentions.)

He arrives in Sea-Tac late, almost midnight, so she makes the 10-mile drive to the airport to pick him up (yes, she’s definitely her mother’s daughter: she’s a worrier through and through. Besides, taxis can just get _so_ expensive).

 _I’m out by the pick-up area in a gray Civic_ , she texts him.

 _I’m aware of what your car looks like_ , he sends back.

She spends the next twenty minutes with the hazards and the headlights on, trying to pick out the silhouette of his colossal height in the pouring rain. Each time she spots a well-dressed person towering under a black umbrella, her heart skips a beat. But it’s an inaccurate assessment: he’ll probably show up in jeans and a windbreaker, his lost fashion sense collateral damage from the fall of his mind.

 _Where are you?_ she types out on her phone, and right before she goes to hit send, her passenger door opens up. Sheets of rain and wind cause the random scraps of paper she’s jotted notes on to scatter around her car's interior. Her hair billows around her face like a blindfold. Just as quickly the car door slams shut, and the wind and rain and noise cuts out. Here he is, the windswept, unkempt man that’s kept her up two hours past her doctor-recommended bedtime.

“Hi,” she offers, taking in the rain-soaked windbreaker and the messy, wind-tussled hair. He radiates an exhaustion that rivals her own. She wants to rush him to his hotel and roll him in sheets and comforters like a burrito, just to relieve the faint chill she senses from his waterlogged figure.

“I’ll be _having words_ with Ruby about booking a flight so late,” he responds, and the disgruntled discomfort is almost, well, comforting in its familiarity. “I’m sorry you had to come out so late.”

“It’s no problem,” she says. He nods in appreciation.

He drifts in and out of sleep in the passenger seat as she drives through the rain-soaked streets of metropolitan Washington. The slow stop-and-go rhythm of the traffic must not hurt, she thinks. Her mother used to drive her around when she was a baby. Apparently riding in a car is a panacea for sleep deprivation in all ages.

She loses track of time, so it could be ten or forty minutes later when she pulls up to the drop-off circle at the Westin (he always stays in such… accommodating places). He’s still asleep in the passenger seat, his expression peaceful with the respite of the dream realm. The beard makes the shadows cast on his face ever darker, the tranquility of his closed eyelids incompatible with the sharp, dark planes of his jaw line.

She reaches out to poke him awake but instead finds her hand drawn to his beard. The scruff itches against her fingertips, not unpleasantly, and she is suddenly overwhelmed in gratitude that he’s _here_ , that things are _safe_ again.

It must be the pressure of her lips rather than the feather-light touches of her fingers that awaken him.

His eyes are a mix of surprise and exhaustion (and lust?); he breathes fast and deep when she breaks the contact to surface for air.

“Alex,” he says breathily, still half under the poor-decision-making influence of sleeplessness. He imbues her name with layers and layers of meaning, of unsaid feelings and insinuations that make her world spin. But he’s here, and she hasn’t slept in twenty-eight hours, and it’s _her_ name he’s murmuring. So by divine or demonic will, she dives in again.

There’s hesitance, at first, a cautiousness she assumes must be born from the betrayal of other women and the cataclysmic shift she’s caused in their… whatever they have. Then there’s a shy eagerness, an appreciation of the attention cast in his direction that he’s previously ignored. And, finally, the spark of acceptance, the _might as well_ outlook that has her heart filled with a hope she hasn’t touched in months. His hands are on her face and neck and shoulders; his breaths come in quick gasps as she pushes forward, her legs creeping onto the center console, and she hears his head knock on the window.

He pushes her back with gentleness uncharacteristic of the madman he’s become. Their breathing is ragged, as if they’re teenagers caught under the bleachers at a high school football game.

“Um,” she says, shifting her leg against the console cutting painfully into her knee. “Maybe you should get some sleep?”

He’s more composed than her (she finds his self-restraint irritating at times). He’s just staring at her, as if he’s a jeweler appraising her like an imperfect diamond.

“Perhaps,” he agrees with her, at last. A beat passes, and she holds in her disappointed sigh.

“Though I do have some files that you may find rather interesting. You could, well. Come up with me. To review them. The files.”

He’s not looking at her, but she knows him too well.

“Of course,” she says, and goes to park the car in the Westin’s garage.

She only wishes she’d packed a change of clothes.

**Author's Note:**

> The lovely and talented [beyondspareoom](http://beyondspareoom.tumblr.com) posted some [amazing fan art on her art blog (pivlywhip)](http://pivlywhip.tumblr.com/post/140970054327/so-remembertowrite-wrote-a-lovely-thing-and-it) inspired by this story. She has lots of other Black Tapes art as well, go check her blog out!


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